Ein Brief

© Joselito Briones

Erlangen, den 30.11.2006

Lieber James,

vielen Dank für deinen netten Brief. Du hast richtig gehört, ich wohne jetzt in Deutschland. Die Stadt, wo meine Wohnung ist, heißt Erlangen. Diese Stadt is nördlich der Gegend, wo die Leute Lederhosen zu tragen lieben. Ja, ich lebe in Bayern.

Erlangen ist eine schöne Stadt, aber zu klein. Es gibt kein kino für Filme auf Englisch. Es gibt auch kein Geschäft mit dem A3 Fotopapier.

Die Leute hier sind nett, aber manchmal gibt es auch hässliche, alte Damen in den Geschäften. Ich glaube, sie sind wirklich unzufrieden mit ihren Männern. Sie sind ganz, ganz unfreundlich.

Meine wohnung liegt in einem roten Haus, das Gebäude ist sehr modern. Du musst mich besuchen.


Herzliche Grüße,

dein Joselito

XXX


Yep, another homework sent to you. My Lehrerin, Aline, has corrected the mistakes I made in the text.

The photo is of a house, right in front of the building where I live. It will soon be demolished, to be replaced by a new multi-family building, similar to ours.


XXX

Filipino Food

© Joselito Briones

This is something I see everytime I go to my German class - a Siemens building, an annex to the tallest one in the neighborhood, that is used as company canteen. I always like to peep in to see what sort of things they cook there, there's always a few white-hatted employees visible from the street, busy preparing enormous amounts of food. I like the building's horizontality and openness, it reminds me of the pictures of modern buildings in architectural books that I used to browse through in uni.


XXX

I was browsing through magazines when I saw this mention of a new cookbook, from one of my favorite restaurants in New York, "Cendrillon". The book is called "Memories of Philippine Kitchens" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). Can't wait to see the more than 100 recipes inside.


XXX

My Dear Mr. Bond,

Promotional photo of "Casino Royale" from Sony Pictures

Damn good movie, this one. When's the last time you did "woaaahhhh!"'s and "holy crap!!!" in the movies? As with the last few Bond movies, the opening credits alone was worth the ticket money already. So cool!

Daniel Craig puts the character back to its original erhmm... character. One played to perfection by Sean Connery and softened to parody-status by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan (OK, fine, Brosnan's still the best Bond, first few times he did it, if one takes into account the "fit" of the characterization with the times). Craig didn't really have any choice, with Hong Kong movies having redefined the adrenalin-level standard of action movies, he might as well have refused to make the movie if he was just gonna do another Brosnan film.

The chase alone, on feet, in the beginning, was enough to carry the whole film, action-wise. That guy Bond was chasing was just awesome! I actually wanted him to be able to get away from Bond.

I started getting bored somewhere in the middle, with the long poker game sequences, and wondered why they even bothered with it, before I remembered that the movie's title is "Casino Royale". Another downer was how everything was explained to the viewers... like "M" asking Bond if he knew why he's still alive, explaining how the girl (Eva Green) made sacrifices to make that possible. Like, hello? A five year old would've figured that out by himself (if he's allowed to watch the movie, I mean). And Bond professing his love to the girl??? Come on! I'd rather he act it than say it. Heath never said anything about his feeelings for Jake, did he?

The jokes are better too, more clever. Or maybe it's just Craig's delivery. His face is always so serious that when he delivers a punchline it's usually unexpected, unlike Brosnan from whom everybody expects jokes all the time. The best proof that Craig can really act are the scenes where he was being tortured, the worst when he was all mushy with Green. You'll never see anyone more uncomfortable with a smile.

I enjoyed the movie so much that only when I got back home did I realize upon thinking about the story, that it didn't have a good one.


XXX

P.S. I've noticed that recently more and more people wanders into this correspondence of ours, looking for celebrity pics. I wish they'd come to look at the photos I've taken, but alas, it isn't so. Having said that, in case some random people do wander in here looking for Daniel Craig's naked photos, I thought I'll do the nice thing and direct them to right place. They can be found in this link. Bye, and thanks for dropping by.

XXX